An improved Green s function technique for ion beam transport
Abstract
Ion beam transport theory is of importance to space radiation in that testing of materials in the laboratory environment generated by particle accelerators is a necessary step in materials development and evaluation for space use. The approximations used in solving the Boltzmann transport equation for the space setting are often not sufficient for laboratory work and those issues are the main emphasis of the present work. In space radiation transport, the energy lost through atomic collisions is treated as averaged processes over the many events which occur over even relatively small dimensions of most materials and is referred to as the continuous slowing down approximation. It is reasoned that the few percent energy fluctuation in energy loss has little meaning for ions of broad energy spectra and especially in comparison to the many nuclear events for which uncertainties are still relatively large. In contrast, the laboratory testing of potential shielding materials uses nearly monoenergetic ion beams in which the interpretation of the interaction with shield materials requires a detailed description of the interaction process for comparison to detector responses. The development of a Green's function approach to ion transport facilitates the modeling of laboratory radiation environments and allows for the direct testing of transport approximations of material transmission properties. Using this approach radiation investigators at the NASA, Langley Research Center have established that simple solutions can be found for the HZE ions by ignoring nuclear energy downshifts and dispersion. Such solutions were found to be supported by experimental evidence with HZE ion beams when multiple scattering was added. Lacking from the prior solutions were range and energy straggling and energy downshift and dispersion associated with nuclear events. Recently, we have found global solutions to energy/range straggling and derived a broader class of HZE ion solutions which with the earlier multiple scattering solutions provides a complete solution of the HZE problem.
- Publication:
-
34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002cosp...34E.781T